US defense chief: US troops help keep NKorea, China at bay

TOKYO — North Korea is less able to invade South Korea now than it was a decade or more ago but has become a more lethal threat to Asia and the world, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday.

"The character and priorities of the North Korean regime sadly have not changed," Gates said as he neared the close of a weeklong tour of North Asian capitals worried that Pyongyang might start a new war on the Korean peninsula.

"North Korea's ability to launch another conventional ground invasion is much degraded from even a decade ago, but in other respects it has grown more lethal and more destabilizing," Gates said in an address to students at Keio University.

North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and missile technology "threaten not just the peninsula, but the Pacific Rim and international stability," Gates said.

He also made the case for the continued presence of tens of thousands of US forces in Japan. US military bases on the southern island of Okinawa have become increasingly unpopular because of noise, crowding and the perception that the U.S. takes Japan for granted.

Most of the 49,000 US forces in Japan are based on Okinawa.

But without those forces, "North Korea's military provocations could be even more outrageous," Gates said.

"China might behave more assertively toward its neighbors," he added.

The United States fears that the risk of war is rising between US ally South Korea and the heavily militarized and increasingly unpredictable regime in North Korea, which the Pentagon also considers a looming threat to the mainland United States.

North Korea allegedly sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46, and shelled front-line Yeonpyeong Island in November, killing four. The island sits in waters the North claims as its own.

On Thursday, Gates signaled the U.S. will be flexible as Japanese political leaders try to blunt popular opposition to the continued presence of US Marines and loud aircraft on crowded Okinawa island.

"We do understand that it is politically a complex matter in Japan," Gates said during a press conference with Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa. "We intend to follow the lead of the Japanese government in working with the people of Okinawa to take their interests and their concerns into account."

US officials had made a point in the past of stressing that Japan is obligated to honor its basing agreement with the United States. Under the 50-year-old US-Japan security alliance, the US is obliged to respond to attacks on Japan and protects the country under its nuclear umbrella.

Relations between Tokyo and Washington soured when Japan's previous government tried to move a Marine base out of Okinawa, contrary to a previous agreement with Washington. In May last year the two nations agreed to stick with the original plan and shift Marine Air Station Futenma to a less-populated part of the island, but strong local opposition has stalled progress in carrying it out.

"While issues associated with Okinawa and Futenma have tended to dominate the headlines this past year, the US-Japan defense alliance is broader, deeper and indeed richer than any single issue," Gates said Thursday. — AP